Visiting Mother: Australian soldiers in London during WWI

The State Library of NSW holds a significant collection of WWI diaries and letters. These personal voices reveal the horror, the loneliness and the adventure of war. These accounts also record the delight of visiting London on leave.  The heart of the Empire and the ‘mother country’, London was a place Australians felt they knew, even when most had never visited. 

Like tourists today, Australian soldiers and nurses made the most of their time in London. They walked the streets day and night, witnessing the jovial London police force, air raids and blacked out streets. Women, it was noted by many, were working everywhere — as bus conductors, lift operators, window cleaners: ‘Girls do everything. They are to be seen in all classes of work’ wrote George Horan to his father in 1916.